Coming Next Week to PlayStation Plus: Red Faction Guerrilla Game Trial and More

Hi everyone! Just a quick message for the PlayStation Plus members out there. We are moving to a bi-weekly publish of PlayStation Plus content, so the next update for free, exclusive and discounted items on PlayStation Store will be Tuesday 8/10. Here’s a peek into some of the items that will be included in next week’s update. Also, this will be the last week that some of the free and discounted items will be available, so if you haven’t downloaded Fieldrunners or purchased some of the games and add-ons that are discounted for PlayStation Plus members, do so before next Tuesday.

As a reminder for everyone else, there’s a special limited time introductory offer on PlayStation Plus: Get three additional bonus months of PlayStation Plus if you buy a 1-year package for $49.99. Check out the PlayStation Plus category on PlayStation Store.

You can add up the numbers all you want, but let’s be honest… How much of the content that has been offered so far is actually worth downloading? Also, the early access to the Kane & Lynch 2 demo was artificial, making PS+ subscribers feel special. Anyone who wanted it early just used a UK PSN account and grabbed it the same week.

If anyone wants to see a good example of a Sony divsion doing their jobs correctly, make a Japanese PSN account and look at the TONS of content they get. Their store is updated at least a FEW times per week, and they make SCEA and SCEE look like complete failures in comparison.

Keep up the full downloadable games! I really love digital media and have quite a bit of space left on my 250 Slim. I don’t really care about the 60 min trial thing, let’s just get more titles up for download on the PSN.

And man, are there some WHINY children in this post. No one forced you to buy PS+. It’s basically a reward program for frequent spenders. I’m not really sure what you were expecting, but the fact that they’re giving you hundreds of dollars worth of content for $50/ year sure trumps what the other console services are offering. And it’s optional, so if you don’t like it, don’t buy it.

Oh, I’m totally in agreement that much of the content thus far hasn’t been worthwhile to download for many (though not all) gamers. From a sheer profit/loss perspective, though, just the discounts thus far are about $5 more in total than the price of what is currently a 15-month subscription. From an economic standpoint, they can make the argument that they are providing a phenomenal value for the cost.

From a content standpoint, though, the selection misses their target audience (if indeed hardcore gamers), no doubt. They point I was making was simply that they have provided a large amount of economic value from the supplier standpoint, but the consumers are thus far choosing not to avail themselves of all of that value because they aren’t targeting it correctly.

In other words, like I mentioned, it’s value vs. perceived value. The value is there, technically, but the perceived value is much lower due to the choices made in the content line-up. See what I mean?

I think some people also need to get it through their head that PS+ is not intended as a service that makes sense for everyone. It’s like a book or dvd or bd club.

Personally the disney blu-ray club doesn’t make sense for me even though I’m a huge disney fan. Likewise this service IS NOT FOR EVERYONE! For me, its been great though. I was an annual qore subscriber, did not have wipeout hd, critter crunch or any minis and have a PSP. I find a lot of value in getting wipeout, critter crunch, age oof zombies, fieldrunners, kahoots, and qore. Someone else my not find any value in any of those (because they bought them, don’t have a PSP, or want newer games). That doesn’t mean the service is garbage just that it might not be for you.

Hey Grace, since it’s going to be bi-weekly now, should we expect a bigger batch of content since it’s bi-weekly? Like before the change, we’d get about 4-5 things, would it be safe to assume that since it’s bi-weekly well get content in the range of 7+ every 2 weeks? Thanks! :)

I’m getting contantly banged by my friends for subscribing to PS+, all of em say that there hasn’t been anything there that they would like and make em become members themselves.

this will certainly wont help at all… I still have high hopes for what it was offered from start, specially demo exclusivities and beta priority… and well… we’re getting old content and discounts… and early demos come to everyone else 2 days later… doesn’t seem too exclusive to me.

oh well… hope I see something that blows away everyone in the near future

LOL, I saw bi-weekly and thought you meant twice a week! I was thinking ‘maybe now I will sign up for plus’. Going to need a fixed discount for movies, tv, games or something really great to get me to even consider plus now.

Red Faction is an awesome game tho, I do have it already on Blu-ray as I expect anyone who cared about that type of game would by now. Full game purchasing capability is awesome, but it needs to be brand new games. Like sometime this year-ish new.

This is the point, I am a frequent spender on the PS Store. I’ve been buying games on the store for years. PS Plus sounded like a great program, I thought since I spend so much on the store it would be a great deal. It hasn’t been for me because by all accounts they are going to spend the rest of the year offering very old content that I’ve already purchased. I think they should at least try to offer SOMETHING a bit newer and exciting. RF:G is hardly new and hardly exciting.

I find it funny that every time Grace Chen post a blog post, it 99% likely to be rated low :)

European Blog >>>>>>>>>>> US Blog because the EU blog actually listen to the readers feedback to enhance their PLUS service. The EU Plus have a poll to see which games people want for free and then actually give the games for free or discounts to the Plus subscribers.

yeah the Japanese PSN store has ‘real’ PSone classics, update several times a week, and allow you to change your PSN ID. We have update once a week at a random time, horrible PSone classics, and we can’t even change our PSN ID.

WTF, I was waiting for Zen Pinball today. I am pretty sure that we were promised 1 big title at the beginning of each month starting with Wipeout HD, and followed by Zen Pinball.

This is just BS. Why wait until the day the PSN store and PS+ updates are supposed to hit to make this post. Did you all just sit around this morning drinking coffee asking yourselves what you can do to piss everyone off and get everyone ranting on the boards? No their is now way this was a decision made today so why wait until the last minute to tell us? Seems like a load of BS.

I havn’t purchased PSN+ yet but something about Plus is not sitting right with me.

If you put up items for the “month” of what’s free, discounted, and trial, why is it not up for the whole month? Why have things that were put up on PSN+ early in the month disappear already when you havnt even started an new month.

That’s bascially saying that PSN+ items are only avaiable for a limited time during the month before they are replaced or removed. That just doesn’t seem right to me.

So far from the First month of PSN+ having half the items i already bought, and from what’s coming this month, im glad i didnt jump on PSN+

(Other than the fact that they changed the policy on whether free add-ons would remain accessible when/if a subscription ends, that is. That was a total 180 from their previous press releases and blogs.)

“I am pretty sure that we were promised 1 big title at the beginning of each month starting with Wipeout HD, and followed by Zen Pinball.”

I have no idea about Zen Pinball, but remember that PS+ “months” actually began the last week of June, so this new month started LAST week, not this week. We already have the PS3 game for this month: Critter Crunch.

Wow!!! You announce stuff for next week before you post stuff for today… I could’ve bought beer, with the money I used for Ps+. what a rip. I need a Japanese account for real. At least Madden drops next week FTw

This is how it work$: THQ pays Sony a nice lump of money to be featured as this months game trial. Tadaaa, surprise old games marketed as somewhat new again! But you cant fool hardcore gamers SONY.

As I had suspected early on, Playstation Plus is a huge waste of money for gamers, another money trap. Trust me, the thought is appreciated, but SONY just doesnt know how to follow through offering a service that actually BENEFITS its gamer base. Just like all the DLC is a money trap. The only party that benefits from it is SONY.

You’re much better off investing your money ($50 plus all the money you use to buy DLC into a 401K. But I’m sure most of you don’t know how to do that either. Basically, so when you are all 65, you wont have to be figuring out where that next paycheck is coming from to feed your gaming habits. ;)

I’m a big PSN supporter and bought + when it came out. I still hold out hope that at the end of the year, it will have seemed worth it, but I am rather surprised that Sony hasn’t come out with an unexpected big splash customer delighter to make everyone on the fence about plus pull the trigger. I’m currently only mildly satisfied, but I’d prefer to be “delighted”. If it were up today, I’m not sure I’d resubscribe.

They need to take a cue from how slot machines work and how you keep that player geared up and wanting more.

My guess is that they are having trouble negotiating with the game studios about how to compensate them thus are stuck with old crap to give away. They should know that’s what everyone who doesn’t buy + is afraid of and do something about it.

Now my obligatory plug for Crash Commando, the best PSN game out there. Maybe they’ll make it free on Plus this year, it’s an amazingly high quality addictive action game that almost nobody knows about…

Wasn’t it originally advertised as MONTHLY content? People were surprised to find content in the second week, and a lot of folks were frustrated to find that not all of Month 1’s content was in its first week. I don’t recall ever having seen promotions claiming that PS+ updates will always be weekly.

Big dissapointment to announce no new Plus content today, should’ve at least done something for today. So can we just get a advanced schedule like EU has? They know all the way until October. I want to know a breakdown too. I didn’t mind the surprise for weekly content but twice a month, I want a schedule.

Red Faction? It’s a good game but it’s already a year old. And it has a demo so anyone who wants to try it already can. Give us some decent trials for games like Demons Souls or Borderlands that don’t have demos and aren’t older than Jesus.

And switching to bi-weekly updates after the first month is weak. If you’re only going to give us roughly two updates a month, I want to know what’s coming for the whole month in advance and I want it to be clear how long it will be available. The EU blog has a great system. I don’t want “highlights”. I signed up just as much for avatars, themes, and add-on (which by the way has been pathetic so far) as I did for PSN games and I want to know what I’ll be getting, not just what you deem to be highlights.